Sri Lanka to use waste plastic to carpet highways

COLOMBO, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) — Sri Lanka will use recycled waste plastic as a raw material for carpeting highways, local media reported here Saturday.

Minister of Commerce Bandula Gunawardena on Thursday inaugurated the first road paving project in Sri Lanka which uses asphalt modified by waste plastic in Colombo district’s suburb of Homagama.

State-owned Daily News reported that an agreement has been signed between the country’s Western Province Waste Management Authority which will provide waste plastic, and private company AGC Innovate to provide the technology, and the product will be used in paving highways by the Western Province Provincial Road Development Authority.

Sri Lanka produces 7,000 metric tonnes of solid waste a day, 60 percent of which is from the country’s Western Province. The government has announced plans to make recycling plastic compulsory and to ban single-use plastics.